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Great
Things Are Happening in Brooklyn
8th
Season Opening
For updated information go to
www.ahmedian.com
or
www.sistasplace.org Sista's Place
Great Things Happenin'
September 2007
Edited
by
Louis Reyes Rivera
Askia Muhammad Touré
in New York and at Sistas' Place:
From Monday, September 18th thru Sunday, September 23, 2007 Askia
Muhammad Touré will be in New York and Newark, celebrating the recent
publication of two collections of poetry: Mother Earth Responds: Green
Poems and Alternative Visions (Whirlwind Press), and African
Affirmations: Songs for Patriots (Africa World Press).
During his visit to New York, he'll be booksigning at
several hotspots -- The Bowery Poetry Club in lower Manhattan, St. Nick's
Pub in Harlem, at the Upsouth Bookfair at City College, Sister Ndigo's,
among others.
On Friday, September 21, at 7pm, Sistas' Place (456
Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn) will host a special booksigning and discussion
session between Askia Muhammad Touré and fellow poet Louis Reyes
Rivera. This event is free and open to the public and is part of the opening
of the 12th year since Sistas' Place opened its doors as a cultural
haven. Copies of both books will be available for sale.
Right alongside Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia
Sanchez, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, etc., Askia Muhammad Touré is
considered one of the principal architects of the 1960s Black Arts/Black
Aesthetic movements. A member of the legendary Umbra Group and of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Touré has remained an activist
poet of conscience throughout his years. His other books include Earth (1968),
JuJu: Magic songs for the Black Nation (with playwright Ben Caldwell /
1970), Songhai! (1972), and From the Pyramids to the Projects
(1990), which won an American Book Award. Widely published in Black
Scholar, Soulbook, Black Theatre, Black World, and
Freedomways, his poems and essays have embodied the ideology of a
people seeking to reclaim their images and history.
As prelude to
the discussion at Sistas' Place, Rivera will feature Brother Touré on his
radio program, Perspective, Thursday, September 20, at 2pm (WBAI, 99.5 FM,
and streamed on the wbai.org website for up to fourteen days of the
initial airing).
Contacting Louis
Reyes Rivera
If you're interested in
booking Louis Reyes Rivera for readings, lectures, performances with bands,
etc., email
Louisreyesrivera@aol.com or write to
Shamal Books, GPO Box 16, New York City 10116 (or call 718.622.4426). Copies of Louis Reyes
Rivera's award-winning collection, Scattered Scripture, are still
available. For other information, blogs, et al, go to "
Louisreyesrivera " and log in.
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Scholarship Opportunities
* Bell Labs Fellowships for
Under-Represented Minorities:
bell-labs.com/fellowships/CRFP/info.html
*
Student Inventors Scholarships:
invent.org/collegiate
* Student Video Scholarships:
christophers.org/vidcon2k.html
*
Coca-Cola Two Year College Scholarships:
coca-colascholars.org/programs.html
*
Holocaust Remembrance Scholarships:
holocaust.hklaw.com/
* Ayn
Rand Essay Scholarships:
aynrand.org/contests/
*
Brand Essay Competition:
instituteforbrandleadership.org/IBLEssayContest-2002Rules.htm
*
Gates Millennlum Scholarships (major):
gmsp.org/nominationmaterials/read.dbm?ID=12
*
Xerox Scholarships for Students:
2xerox.com/go/xrx/
*
Sports Scholarships and Internships:
ncaa.org/about/scholarships.html
*
National Assoc. of Black Journalists Scholarships (NABJ):
nabj.org/html/studentsvcs.html
*
Saul T. Wilson Scholarships (Veterinary):
aphis.usda.gov/mb/mrphr/jobs/stw.html
*
Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund:
thurgoodmarshallfund.org/sk_v6.cfm
* Financial Aid: the Smart Students Guide
to Financial Aid scholarships:
finaid.org/
*
Presidential Freedom Scholarships: nationalservice.org/scholarships/
*
Microsoft Scholarship Program:
microsoft.com/college/scholarships/minority.asp
*
Wired Scholar Free Scholarship Search:
wiredscholar.com/paying/scholarship_search/pay_scholarship%20_search.jsp
*
Hope Scholarships & Lifetime Credits:
ed.gov/inits/hope/
* William Randolph Hearst Endowed
Scholarship for Minority Students:
apsanet.org/PS/grants/aspen3.cfm
*
Multiple List of Minority Scholarships:
gehon.ir.miami.edu/financial-assistance/Scholarship/black.html
*
Guaranteed Scholarships:
guaranteed-scholarships.com/
* BOEING Scholarships (some HBCU connects):
boeing.com/companyoffices/educationrelations/scholarships
*
Easley National Scholarship Program:
naas.org/senior.htm
*
Maryland Artists Scholarships:
maef.org/
*
Historically Black College & University
Scholarships:
iesabroad.org/info/hbcu.htm
* Actuarial Scholarships for Minority
Students:
beanactuary.org/minority/scholarships.htm
*
International Students Scholarships & Aid Help:
iefa.org/
* College Board Scholarship Search:
cbweb10pcollegeboard.org/fundfinder/html/fundfind01.html
*
Burger King Scholarship Program:
bkscholars.csfa.org/
*
Siemens Westinghouse Competition:
siemens-foundationorg/
*
GE and LuLac Scholarship Funds: lulac.org/Programs/Scholar.html
CollegeNet's Scholarship Database:
mach25.collegenet.com/cgi-bin/M25/index
* Union Sponsored Scholarships and Aid: aflcioorg/scholarships/scholar.htm
*
Scholarship & Financial Aid Help:
blackexcel.org/fin-sch.htm /
blackexcel.org/25scholarships.htm
*Scholarship
Links (Ed Finance Group):
efg.net/link_scholarship.htm
*
FAFSA On The Web (Your Key Aid Form & Info):
fafsaed.gov/
*
Aid &Resources For Re-Entry Students:
back2college.com/
* Scholarships and Fellowships:
osc.cuny.edu/sep/link%20s.html
* Scholarships for Study in Paralegal
Studies:
paralegals.org/Choice/2000west.htm
*
HBCU Packard Sit Abroad Scholarships (for study around the world)
sit.edu/studyabroad/packard_nomination.html
* Scholarship and Fellowship Opportunities:
ccmi.uchicago.edu/schl1.html
*
INROADS Internships:
inroads.org/
*
NAACP/ ACT-SO Scholarships:
naacp.org/work/actso/act-so.shtml
*
Black Alliance for Educational Options
Scholarships:
baeo.org/options/privatelyfinanced.jsp
*
ScienceNet Scholarship Listing:
sciencenet.emory.edu/undergrad/scholarships.html
*
Graduate Fellowships For Minorities Nationwide:
cuinfo.cornell.edu/Student/GRFN/list.phtml?category=MINORITIES
*
RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS AT OXFORD:
rhodesscholar.org/info.html
*
The Roothbert Scholarship Fund:
roothbertfund.org/schol
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They
Stole Us. They Sold Us. They Owe Us! -- Reparations
Concert
Louis Reyes Rivera and The
Jazzoets setting poetry to music in honor of the
Reparations Movement and to help raise funds for the upcoming
Black Belt South Long March scheduled for this coming July.
"Both nationally and internationally," says Viola
Plummer, "we continue to mobilize on behalf of
Reparations."
A broad coalition of groups throughout the U.S., explained Ms.
Plummer, had been instrumental in helping to bring this issue
before the UN World Conference Against Racism, in Durban, South
Africa, three years ago. Among the results of that conference was
the universal passage of a resolution that declared slavery,
colonialism and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as crimes against
humanity, "and therefore," she adds, "are subject
to Reparations. But please understand. This is not about somebody
getting a check in the mail. Reparations means to say, first and
foremost, that a wrong had been committed, that it must be
acknowledged, and that the devastation caused by that wrong must
be addressed."
Since the Durban conference, similar movements have been initiated
by activists in Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, South Africa, Brazil,
Puerto Rico, Australia and elsewhere. Here, in the United States,
a follow-up National Rally for Reparations was held in
Washington DC in August 2002, and in an International Rally in
front of the United Nations in September 2003.
The upcoming 2004 Long March through the Black Belt South, which
will be kicking off on Saturday, July 24, with a national rally in
Columbia, South Carolina, is the latest effort by a broad
coalition of more than thirty activist, civic and religious
organizations to explain the issues involved and to generate
support for what has become an ever-growing grassroots movement.
"We all need to dialogue around the
importance of this march, and to update our brothers and sisters
on the Reparations Movement. But equally important is this
opportunity to once again demonstrate why we, at Sistas' Place,
believe that culture is a weapon. Louis Reyes Rivera and The
Jazzoets are a fine example of how culture and the social struggle
come together, and they do it in a most beautiful way. If you've
never heard Louis' poem on reparations, you need to. If you've
never seen his band perform, you really ought to."
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Sistas'
Place: A History
Contact: (718) 398-1766
On September 23, 1995, Sistas' Place opened its doors in the
heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant and made its debut on John
Coltrane's birthdate as a communal meeting ground and
international coffee house in Central Brooklyn. Soon
enough, Sistas' Place developed a unique reputation for
homebaked pastries and imported coffees from throughout
the African Diaspora. Something Bedford-Stuyvesant
hardly had before -- fragrant hand-mixed blends of
coffee from Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Colombia,
Jamaica, Brazil.
Within two months, Sistas' Place began to feature
Saturday Night Jazz concerts on a semi-monthly basis. By
February 1996, its series of Jazzoetry & Open Mic
Poetry Jams was in place. And for the past seven years
every 1st & 3rd Sundays of the month featured a
houseband of reputable poets and musicians (including
Bed-Stuy laureate, Louis Reyes Rivera, story teller
Atiba Kwabena, slam poet Ngoma, and bandleader-composer
Ahmed Abdullah, among others). They became known as The
Jazzoets.
When Sistas' added onto its menu a Sunday early
dinner-late lunch homecooked meal, known as Dunch, and
Saturday Night Jazz became a major weekly mainstay,
offering the best in contemporary Jazz, Sistas' Place
began to fully enjoy a respectable reputation even
beyond the borders of Central Brooklyn. People from as
near as Maine and Georgia, and as far away as Zimbabwe,
Ghana, and Portugal would come into Kennedy Airport with
an itinerary that included a "must stop" at
Sistas'.
To commemorate their seventh consecutive year as
Bedford-Stuyvesant's venue for both Poetry and Jazz, the
folks at Sistas' Place are offering a month-long series
of Saturday Night Jazz and Sunday Poetry Jams featuring
some of the more respected musicians and poets in New
York.
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* *
Bill Moyers and James Cone (Interview) /
A Conversation with James Cone
* * *
* *
John
Coltrane, "Alabama" /
Kalamu ya Salaam, "Alabama"
/
A Love Supreme
A Blues for the Birmingham Four
/ Eulogy for the Young Victims
/ Six Dead After Church
Bombing
Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music)
update
2 February 2012
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